London, GB | Formerly of New York, Buenos Aires, Fife, and the Western Cape. | Saoránach d’Éirinn.

“Get me ze Führer!”

Stereotypes of Nazi generals in British war films

“The reason for my uniform being a slightly different colour to yours
is never explained.”

The British are, of course, obsessed with the Nazis. There are many reasons for this, amongst which we must include the large number of really quite good war films produced during the 1950s and 1960s.

For some indiscernible reason these movies have the virtue of being eternally rewatchable and many a cloudy Saturday afternoon has been occupied by Sink the Bismarck!, Where Eagles Dare, or The Colditz Story.

The genre also deploys with a remarkable regularity a number of familiar tropes of ze Germans which the above clip from a British comedy sketch programme (introduced to me by the indomitable Jack Smith) aptly mocks.

Published at 10:30 am on Thursday 23 November 2017. Categories: Cinema Errant Thoughts Germany History Military Tags: , , , .
Comments

Highly amusing, Cusack, thank you. One of the best touches was “I have also spent many happy years in London”.
But the joke about the different colours of the uniforms is misplaced. He who makes this remark appears to be Afrika Corps (olive gray) the second general is SS (black, of course), and the first, is, well, who knows, as we don’t see his tunic, but presumably regular army (field gray), like the final, hilariously confused, general.
Good fun.

— Hetterscheidt 24 Nov 2017 9:37 pm
Leave a comment

NAME (required)

EMAIL (required)

WEBSITE (not required)

COMMENT

Home | About | Contact | Paginated Index | Twitter | Facebook | RSS/Atom Feed
andrewcusack.com | © Andrew Cusack 2004-present (Unless otherwise stated)